I Want You to Vote: A Voter Education Presentation KAITLIN Hello and - PDF document

I Want You to Vote: A Voter Education Presentation KAITLIN Hello and welcome. Thank you for coming today two Cougs Vote, a voter education HENNESSY: presentation. We're ready to get started. And my name is Caitlin Hennessy. I'm the program coordinator for the Global Connections programming. If you're interested in future programming, please take a look at connections at connections.wsu.edu. And now I'm going to turn it over to Cassie. She's from the CCE, and she'll be discussing voter requirements, voter deadlines, and why you should vote and the importance of the election process. Thank you so much. CASSIE Great. Hi, everyone. My name is Cassie Rowland, and I am the student engagement ROWLAND: coordinator at the WSU Center for Civic Engagement, also known as the CCE. And thanks for being here tonight. So to get started, I want to take a pretty general approach to voting and just talk a little bit about democratic engagement. So democratic engagement is fundamentally a practice of shared responsibility for a common feature. It is the always-unfinished task of making social choices and working toward public goals that shapes our lives and the lives of others. And that is from the Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement , a lovely book. And really, to think a little bit more specifically about what some examples of democratic engagement are, there is really a wide variety of things that you could do. One thing is advocating for a cause. And this could include protests, writing to a senator, being part of a political organization, and encouraging others to be informed and participate in democracy, or even participating in Coug Day at the capital. So those are all part of advocacy. Also, understanding the issues, that's a really important part of democratic engagement as well. So reading about events and issues, understanding democratic processes in general, and being involved politically-- so that could be running for office, supporting candidates or causes through canvassing, voting, writing, or submitting bills. And then one of my favorite parts of the democratic engagement is civil discourse, which is really having conversation with other people and approaching it with a respectful approach-- so maybe sometimes agreeing to disagree and really trying to have that dialogue with others about why they have the opinions that they do and really approaching that conversation and

not backing away from it. So to just reiterate, advocating for causes, understanding issues, being involved politically, and then also participating in some civil discourse-- those are all examples of democratic engagement. And really, the reason why this CCE is talking about democratic engagement is because it's a presidential election year, if you didn't know that. I try to be funny, but this is a webinar, so I don't know if it's going to work. But I'll try. Anyway, it's a presidential election year, and elections take place on November 8. But even though it's a presidential election year, it's a big year for any political organizations across the state. So a really great example of this is in Washington alone, 88% of our Congress is up for re-election in November. So in Washington alone, we have our governor, our lieutenant governor, our Secretary of State, treasurer, auditor, attorney general, and more all up for re-election this year. We have a US senator open for re-election and also 10 US Congress seats open for election. So just to paint a picture for you, we have two senators in our state and 10 representatives. So one of our two senators is up for re-election, and all of our 10 representatives are up for re- election. And then there's countless local candidates and state measures that involve guns, labor standards, lobbying, taxes, and more that are all part of this year's ballot. So it's really important to be informed and to vote. Emily, I see that you joined us. And I wonder if you have any ideas as to why it's important for students to get involved in the elections from your perspective. And if you do want to share, you can use the chat box. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But while you are thinking about that, I can share some reasons why it would be important to be involved in the elections. One of the many reasons why it's important to be involved is that you can provide political capital and shape political agendas. So politicians don't really care about what you want if they don't know what you want. And so if you don't vote, then they don't know what you want. You can really determine the election results. It can impact your future directly or indirectly. You can increase your knowledge and engagement. You can feel empowered. It's your right and responsibility as a citizen to vote. It's really not all about you. It's about thinking about the collective whole. And it's just a really important way to be an active citizen. So those are some reasons why it's important to be involved in the elections as a student.

So moving on, I have some information to share with you about the WSU system and how we stand on the voting platform system. So this slide here is looking at the 2012 presidential election. And on the left-hand side of this slide, it looks at the registration rate and then the actual voting rate. So we have a 72.1% registration rate of WSU students system-wide. So this includes the Global Campus. 72.3% is the rate of registered students who have voted, so that's really good. But our overall voting rate as a system is only 52.1%. And then you can see how this compares on the right-hand side. The WSU system, which is your institution here, we are at 52.1%, which compared to other universities, it is a bit higher, which is really good. So we're-- I can't do math very well, but eight points higher, eight percentage points higher than all other institutions. And that's really good, but we really would like to have 100% voting rate through the WSU system. Looking at WSU in comparison to the whole United States, this is broken down by age. So 46.5% of 18 to 21-year-olds voted, which is actually pretty comparable when you look at the right-hand graph, which is the whole United States, to the 45% of all 18 to 29-year-olds who voted. So this is just another breakdown of that data. And the total US voting rate is 53.6%. So as a WSU system, we are actually voting below the whole US voting rate. Let's talk a little bit more about the US voting rate. This is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And this is our worldwide election rates based on the most highly developed and democratic states in the world. So out of 35 of these countries, the United States ranks 31st. So as a country, we're really doing a poor job of having all of those that are eligible to vote to vote. And the reason why this is such a big problem is that there could be an entire shift of the outcomes of elections if 100% of people voted versus the 52% of our system or 53% of our whole country. If 100% of people voted, candidates with low support might actually get a higher percentage of votes. And also, maybe 53% of the people that are voting are voting for people that our whole country may not like or support. A really good example of this in our state is in 2004, the Washington governor race, Christine Gregoire beat out Dino Rossi by only 133 votes. So when people say, oh, my vote doesn't matter, or I just really don't care that much, so I'm not going to vote-- your vote does matter. Because if those 133 people didn't vote for Christine Gregoire, maybe Dino Rossi would have won, and politically, our state could be in a different place right now. So that was just an